


to the horizon

by ronsenboobi (snewvilliurs)



Series: arroway family adventures in eorzea 2: stormblood boogaloo [4]
Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Emotionally Repressed Ala Mhigans, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Gen, Mother-Son Relationship, Non-WoL Adventurer, Patch 4.1: The Legend Returns, Post-Revolution
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-12
Updated: 2020-05-12
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:35:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 17,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24151426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snewvilliurs/pseuds/ronsenboobi
Summary: learning to live after the fight, and making a home. set directly after the events of stormblood and throughout patch 4.1.Raubahn turned his gaze back towards the sky; only then did Morgana chance a glance at him. She thought her words might have soured him, but it seemed she was the only one in reach of her own poison. Was he so secure in his decision that her disapproval left him utterly unbothered? The thought pushed anger through her ribs. Were she in his place, leaving Ala Mhigo and returning to the land that had been little more than a prison to her might have torn her apart.
Relationships: Original Female Character & Original Male Character, Raubahn Aldynn/Warrior of Light
Series: arroway family adventures in eorzea 2: stormblood boogaloo [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1499351
Comments: 2
Kudos: 2





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> featuring morgana arroway, a member of the ala mhigan resistance and former gladiator; and her son, sairsel arroway, half-elezen ranger.
> 
> title taken from the ending of ffxii: "the war is over. ivalice looks to the horizon. a new day has dawned -- we are free."
> 
> (originally posted on [tumblr](https://farplane.tumblr.com/post/189233489008/to-the-horizon-part-four) in four parts, now on ao3 six months late with starbucks)

“I was told there was an urgent matter for me to attend to,” said Raubahn. **  
**

Morgana shrugged, her tone coming surprisingly lofty. “Well, I didn’t raise _my_ son to be a liar.”

Raubahn thoughtfully narrowed his eyes, considering the integrity of his retort, then dared it: “You _didn’t_ raise your son.”

“Oh, so the Bull plays dirty, then,” Morgana said, dropping her voice as she stepped closer to him and put a hand on her hip—only the right. Her left arm was still almost entirely bandaged, and for the most part, completely useless.

They made a fine pair.

“Is it fair to involve my son in whatever machination this is?” Raubahn asked. He matched her tone, met her eyes.

“When I mentioned to young Pipin—the vice marshal, my apologies—that I had a bottle of arak waiting for you to celebrate, he all but threw a sack of gil at me to contribute and made it his personal mission to usher you towards it. Thinks you ought to rest,” Morgana said, primly patting his chest. “So, really, this ‘machination’ is rather more his doing than mine.”

“There is much to do.”

“Ala Mhigo will be no closer to being whole again no matter how many nights of sleep you miss. If one man was all it took, we wouldn’t be a nation.”

Morgana turned around and walked to the table where she had set down the bottle of arak before he could offer up any more protests, pouring water from a jug into two goblets before adding the arak and watching it turn milky white. “One drink, Raubahn,” she added, picking up one of the goblets to hand to him. “You have to raise a glass to our freedom.”

“I ought to celebrate,” Raubahn said as he plucked the goblet out of her hand, making no effort not to let his fingers brush against hers, “but should you be?” he asked, raising his eyebrows at her arm.

“I’ve spent almost every second since the fighting stopped in so much pain that I thought I was going blind,” Morgana said honestly. To anyone else, she might have diminished her own suffering in the days since their victory, but there was no point in it with him. He knew pain better than most. “I think three different healers have exhausted themselves making it better. If I’m able to stand on my own two feet, I owe it to them to make the most of it.”

“And your son?”

“Healthy and whole. Keeping busy. Likely doesn’t want me to talk about him about as fervently as I don’t want to talk about him, right now.”

Morgana held up the second goblet, and Raubahn knocked his against it; they drank in unison, eye to eye. She was taken with the urge to make a contest of it, but it would be a waste of good arak—better to save games for whatever piss the Ul’dahns might have brought with them.

“Gods, the taste,” Raubahn said as he looked down at the goblet in his hand. “I think I’d forgotten how much I missed it.”

Morgana nodded, then tapped her nose. “I felt the same about the salt from up here. The westerly winds.”

“Would that it were so easy to bottle up the wind,” Raubahn said with a small smile.

“Might be easier to do than finding good arak these days. You wouldn’t believe how much this cost.” Morgana glanced down into her goblet, drumming her fingers against it. “Have you heard? Word in Ala Ghiri is there’s to be the first date crops in decades. In Coldhearth.”

Some manner of nostalgia flashed across Raubahn’s face as he drank. “No, I hadn’t heard. I’m glad for them.”

Between their newfound freedom and her burns making her near delirious with pain, Morgana had not spent much of her recovery worrying about the future like a lovesick little girl—and she didn’t intend on starting now that she was on her feet. Still, it was near impossible not to wonder: Raubahn had fought for Ala Mhigo because the Alliance had finally chosen to involve itself; what chains wouldn’t pull a man like him back to Ul'dah?

“I’ve been trying to imagine you as a date farmer,” she said with a tentatively wicked smile, instead of asking the question that lingered at the back of her mind.

“Is that so?”

“Mm,” she hummed into her goblet, raising a telling eyebrow at him before dropping her gaze to his chest. “Date farmers don’t wear shirts all that much, do they?”

“Perhaps you ought to go to Coldhearth and ask,” Raubahn said, smiling despite himself.

“Will you?” she asked, dropping the act like the snapping of a drillmaster’s whip. “Go back.”

“There isn’t much left for me back in Coldhearth,” he said simply. “I’ll never renounce my home, but there never really was.”

Morgana hummed again as she drained the last of her goblet and set it down; the sweet warmth was spreading through her, but she’d had enough of the haze the healers had put on her to manage the pain these past few days to drink any more.

“What of you? Once a sellsword, always a sellsword?” Raubahn asked.

“Perhaps; I haven’t given it much thought yet. Was waiting to see how this heals,” she said, nodding her chin towards her left arm. “Chirurgeons keep telling me that they won’t know for certain how much strength I’ll regain until I can move without too much pain. Might be it won’t hold a sword or a shield ever again.”

“I’m sorry,” Raubahn said. He set down his goblet, too, raising his hand to her left shoulder—gingerly avoiding the vicinity of the highest bandages. He touched the braid that lay against her neck, then the familiar scars.

“Don’t be. I’ve survived everything that’s tried to kill me so far and I don’t intend on letting this stop me any more than worse has stopped you.”

“You know that isn’t what I meant,” Raubahn said, almost wearily. 

“And you know I still have a fair few fights left in me.”

“I do.”

His hand shifted, palm coming to lay flat against the side of her neck as his fingers splayed and his thumb rested at the edge of her jaw. This time, he was the one who kissed her, bowing his head as though to some higher power; it was out of freedom that she sank against him, anchoring her good arm around his shoulders.

“What are you doing?” she asked against his lips.

“Celebrating. Would you rather I stop?”

“Absolutely not,” she said, and kissed him again.

“The pain?”

“Bearable. Maybe I’ll even forget about it.”

Morgana wasn’t sure whether it was she who steered Raubahn towards the table or he who led, like a dance with steps so familiar she no longer realized how she even moved her feet.

“If it gets worse—”

“ _Missio_ ,” she said, lifting middle and forefinger. 

Even after twenty years, after the life-rending struggles, the words and gestures of the bloodsands were a shorthand she shared with him—without Gotwin, him and no one else. He needed no more words, no further explanation. From the first, surrender had been something between them that bore none of the shame that it might in the arena. Surrender and abandon; their meaning shifted, pulling down walls.

And she added, opening her knees and hooking her leg up around his waist to pull him closer: “It won’t get worse.” 

For good measure, she grabbed a fistful of his cloak and gave a tug.

“I would not want to be that which battles against your will,” Raubahn said, smirking.

“No battles for today. Not for a while,” Morgana said; she smiled in spite of herself.

*******

“Your braids are a mess,” said Morgana. Blessedly, it made Raubahn laugh.

“And whose fault is that?”

She had spent upwards of ten minutes running her fingers through his hair—pulling on it, sometimes—while he had his mouth on her, it was true, but she now wore an expression that completely eschewed responsibility.

“Do we need a culprit?” she asked, sighing lightly as she sat up. She combed her own hair back with her fingers, then nudged Raubahn’s shoulder. “I would rather look for a solution. Come on; sit.”

Raubahn grunted and all but rolled off the bed as Morgana pointed to the floor, sitting down with his back to her. She moved to sit over the edge, one leg dangling beside his shoulder, and began running her fingers through his hair.

“You didn’t have to bother,” he said quietly—a small courtesy, given that he was already leaning his head back, his eyes fluttering closed.

“And how exactly were you planning on fixing it with one hand?” Morgana asked, then snorted. “Gods—actually, I think I won’t bother. I would love to watch the great General Raubahn Aldynn skipping back to the Alliance garrison fresh from a tumble and looking like it. Do you think anyone will have the balls to comment?”

Raubahn grimaced. “Let us pretend I said nothing.”

“How long is the Alliance planning on staying here, anyroad?”

“Not much longer,” Raubahn said after a moment. “The Elder Seedseer has already returned to Gridania with a significant portion of Adder forces and the Knights of Ishgard in tow. Maelstrom Command is making preparations to sail home.”

“And the Flames?” Morgana asked, detached, as though getting a first braid back into shape was something so utterly demanding that it sapped her interest.

“We’ve made no preparations as of yet. The matter of the Ala Mhigan Brigade alone is a complex enough matter, and given our close working relationship with the Resistance, I’ve yet to…”

“You mean you’re still trying to solve every single problem that crops up.”

“Cut off one head and two more shall appear.”

Tensely, Morgana smiled. Already, she knew she shouldn’t have broached the subject, but it was becoming as difficult to ignore the looming shadow of Raubahn’s commitment to Ul’dah as it was uncomfortable to speak of it. And it wasn’t that she cared, really, not for herself—she hadn’t taken a lover with the thought of becoming partners since Ala Mhigo fell, and liberation wouldn’t change what had become her nature—but for his own sake. She knew she would sooner cut off her sword arm than return to that gods-forsaken desert now that the griffin standard flew over the walls of the city once more.

It made her ache, to think of chains pulling him back again as they had once bound him to the Coliseum; and it felt like half a betrayal, even after all the fighting, to imagine that they were not chains at all, but a true desire.

Raubahn’s fingers trailed idly along her calf. He seemed half a world away, too.

“I think this may well be my first time braiding someone else’s hair since my brother died,” Morgana said clumsily after a time—as though that were a more pleasant subject.

“Is that so?”

Morgana made a noise of assent at the back of her throat. “After our parents died, we—well, we’d trade to save time. I did his, he did mine. He had a knack for it. I could go days without having to touch them.”

Wordlessly, Raubahn turned his head—careful not to undo her work—and pressed a kiss to her ankle. “It’s not often you speak of him.”

“Dwelling on the past has made me want to die time and time again. I’m not fond of the idea of dying, so I don’t.”

To her surprise, a chuckle escaped Raubahn’s lips—rather mirthless and grim, for something of a laugh, but a chuckle nonetheless.

“How is this amusing to you?”

“I’ve had many opportunities to dwell, over the years. Oftentimes on you,” he admitted with ease. “I would always imagine you saying something much like this when I snapped myself out of it.”

Morgana finished the last of his braids, but didn’t move. “So I’m predictable.”

“Or perhaps I simply have a good memory,” Raubahn said simply. “It would always remind me of who I had once been—who we both had.”

“Sounds an awful lot like dwelling to me.” 

Raubahn smiled, bittersweet, and looked down at his hand. “Aye, I suppose I did dwell, after all; I never stopped thinking of this land as my home. Then I came to realize that it may not think the same of me, for all that I had changed. Thinking of the past made it seem as though it might keep me from becoming unrecognizable.”

Silent, Morgana swallowed thickly. She dropped her hands back to her lap, only to shift with a shudder as the fingertips of her right hand brushed against the burn scars of her left—and then she slid off the bed, folding herself beside Raubahn. She looked at him.

“Do you recognize me?” she asked.

Raubahn did not need to even glance at her to know the answer, but he turned his head to meet her gaze nonetheless. “Aye.”

“I recognize you.”


	2. Chapter 2

It never ceased to confound Morgana that a boy born of a Highlander and an Elezen—regardless of how middling and slender Nimaurel had been—could be so short. Sairsel was of a height with most Midlander men, and she understood that Nimaurel’s girl, too, had more of a Miqo’te’s size, which was all the more puzzling. Still, Sairsel stood as a shadow against the building at the very edge of the Alliance’s temporary headquarters shared with the Resistance in the Ala Mhigan Quarter—and that shadow stretched long and tall on the cobblestones. 

He’d taken to wearing Ala Mhigan archer’s attire along with his ranger’s coat, the deep green and brown tones as perfectly suited to his woods as the dusty Gyr Abanian highlands; now that he dressed to look as whole as he felt, he appeared five years older than he had but a year past. There was a nonchalance about the way he held himself that Morgana beheld with such fondness that it surprised her—she understood that her son’s mind worked in ways that made true assurance impossible, but he was a fighter, now. The set of his jaw, the length of his spine, the broadness of his shoulders all seemed to say he was strong enough to fight his own battles.

“You look busy,” Morgana commented as she stopped beside him. Without a word, Sairsel tore off a piece of the flatbread in his hands—buttery and still warm—and handed it to her.

“Your friend, the general—he’s just finished making his address to the Flames and the Resistance about how he’s going back to Ul’dah,” Sairsel explained around a mouthful. Sharp green eyes still on the crowd. “Caused some hells of a stir.”

Morgana breathed out a sigh through her nose, her shoulders tense as she willed them not to drop with the disappointment. “I imagine it would. He’s a hero and a legend even here, after all these years; the Resistance will be as disheartened to see him leave as the Flames will be glad to go home with him.”

Sairsel only met those words with a wordless hum.

“What?” Morgana asked.

“Suppose I just don’t understand it,” he said with a shrug. “I was born after the imperials came and I’d never even seen a malm beyond the Wall before the Griffin, and you’d have to drag me kicking and screaming out here, so soon after it’s just become ours again.” 

Morgana opened her mouth to speak, but Sairsel went on: “Make no mistake: the Wood is still my home, it’ll always be, but I didn’t fight and bleed and—and lose so much for Ala Mhigo not to want to be a part of it.”

“You’re young; Raubahn is of an age with me. It’s easier to wander when you’ve only seen twenty summers.”

Sairsel made a face. “Sure, but it’s the words he used,” he said, scratching short nails thoughtfully against the stubble at his jaw. “ _Back_ to Ul’dah; not home. All the Flames are talking about going home—except for the Ala Mhigan Brigade, I suppose—but not him. It’s Ala Mhigo he calls home, and he’s still leaving.”

“Some people don’t want to die at home,” Morgana said coldly. “If he wants to spend the rest of his days with his sultana and waste away in the desert, it’s his choice.”

“That’s grim,” Sairsel said, looking at her.

Morgana shoved the piece of flatbread in her mouth.

“I heard Gundobald and a few others have decided to stay in Little Ala Mhigo, too.”

“True,” Morgana said. “Not everyone’s well enough to make the journey back. I’m not surprised he’d choose to stay; it was always about the people, with him. That’s why we chose him to lead us.”

Sairsel nodded, and watched the crowd in silence for a moment. “What about you? Have you thought about going back?”

“I bloody well won’t,” Morgana said without a second’s hesitation. “I’ve seen enough of Eorzea. When I die, I don’t want to be buried in the Tomb of the Errant Sword. I promised myself that a long time ago.”

The unrestrained look of relief on Sairsel’s face spoke volumes about his own intentions. A part of Morgana struggled to believe that he wasn’t running back to the Shroud now that the fight was over, but she now understood that it was all too easy to assume things about the young man in front of her and be wrong. Sairsel was bound to those woods, it was true—he’d been unhappy enough in Thanalan, as though he were himself a plant wasting away without water and rich soil and shade to nourish him in the desert—but he had wandering feet, too. 

He looked upon Gyr Abania with a hungry wonder that elated her as much as it broke her heart to see not familiarity but novelty in the way her own son beheld her home.

It was strange, being a mother. She’d never known so many regrets, before—but she could console herself with the knowledge that they had all the time in the world, now, to build monuments to the future that might make up for lost time.

Unbidden, Morgana reached out to pat Sairsel’s shoulder. He had filled out over the last few moons: wider, firmer, stronger. “I’m staying here,” she assured him, with a gentler tone than she’d just used. Gentler than the way she spoke most of the time; however inflexible her nature may be, she was beginning to find that she had no love for the way she would speak to him until the Wall.

“So am I,” Sairsel said, nodding solemnly. “For a while.”

Morgana almost smiled. She spared one last look towards the Alliance headquarters, bristling at the over-familiar scale bearing flame and diamond upon its black banner, and made to go on her way.

“I’ve some business to take care of. I’ll seek you out later,” she told Sairsel in parting.

It was time, too—a return already overlate—to let go of what was lost.

*******

“I have need of you, boy,” said Morgana. **  
**

Sairsel glanced over his shoulder at the walkway that led into the palace. “I’m still on watch. You’re aware there’s to be a summit taking place here in less than two days, are you?”

“I’m aware.” It was Morgana’s turn to glance around. “Won’t take long.”

“What, you’re going to finally put me down like a lame chocobo?” Sairsel asked—stupidly, he realized as Morgana’s gaze fell upon him again, perplexed and vaguely annoyed.

“What?”

Gods, he might as well have shrunk then and there. “Bad joke.”

Morgana’s reply was to purse her lips and whistle—mortifyingly, at Leofric. “Oi, Snakesbane. You have an eye on my boy, yes? Be a sweet and fill his post for a spell. Better use of your time than trying to fill something else.”

“Oschon’s _balls._ ” 

Leofric raised his eyebrows at Morgana, then glanced over at Sairsel—who had now raised a hand to his face as though it might be enough to hide its colour.

“Ever the poet, Morgana,” Leofric said gracefully. “I’d have said yes even if you hadn’t asked so nicely.”

“Right.” She didn’t spare Leofric even a second glance, nudging Sairsel’s arm and already beginning to walk. “Come on. We haven’t got all evening.”

“I’m sorry,” Sairsel hissed at Leofric, arms outstretched and shaking his head. It earned him a wink, and so he was all too glad to follow after his mother. She always walked like a soldier at march. “Have you decided to make up for twenty years of living without being embarrassed by my mother all in one afternoon?”

“If he’s truly fond of you, he’ll be glad to know that someone who cares is looking after you.”

“I don’t need looking after,” Sairsel said quickly, bristling. “And he’s my bloody unit captain; there’s nothing to be looking _for._ This isn’t Little Ala Mhigo where he was—where I was— anyroad, things have changed.”

“You’re telling me you plan on staying with the Resistance long?” Morgana asked. From her tone, it was clear enough that she struggled to believe that such a thing could be true.

“I don’t know,” Sairsel began, but she spoke again.

“Because even I’m considering moving on. You realize what it’s going to change into, now that we’re free, don’t you?” She glanced over at him. “You don’t want to be a soldier.”

“I’m glad for you that a few moons is more than ample time for you to understand me so well that you can decide what I may or may not want for myself,” Sairsel said with a voice that sounded surprisingly like her own, flat and unforgiving. “What do you plan on doing?”

“I left Ala Mhigo a sellsword. I see no reason why I shouldn’t take up mercenary work again.”

Sairsel was silent, but Morgana knew, even without facing him, that he was glancing sidelong at her left arm, at her skin pulled taut by scarring.

“I may not be able to hold a shield anymore, boy, but I can still fight. My sword arm was always my right.”

“I know. I didn’t mean—” Sairsel said, then sighed. “You’re still wearing two swords.”

“How observant. I am,” Morgana said. She kept her eyes ahead.

Her decisive pace was leading them north; they left behind the towering walls of Ala Mhigo and the rare greenery of the Queen’s Gardens to travel alongside Loch Seld’s eastern bank. The dwindling sunlight made the still waters shimmer, and when he squinted, each crystal of light thinned and stretched like blades. Above them, the sky was turning a deep blue-grey that bore coloured clouds, shifting with the sunset. 

But Morgana did not seem to notice it.

“We’re going north,” Sairsel said slowly.

“Aye.” When Sairsel added nothing to his observation, Morgana spoke: “Do you understand what that means?”

“Bloodhowe.”

Morgana nodded. “The Tomb of the Errant Sword. I’m assuming you know—”

“It’s a place to honour mercenaries who died on foreign soil,” Sairsel said heavily. “I’ve been. Wilred—it’s where they took Wilred’s sword.”

“It is,” Morgana said. She glanced over at Sairsel, but only for a moment; today, she saw a ghost in his face. Her eyes remained on the horizon as she spoke. “When Gotwin was killed, I took his body to Little Ala Mhigo. But it’s a long way from there to Ul’dah, and I had no time to waste, so I went back to make certain Havisa and Mathias would be out of the city before any more horrors could befall us. Havisa charged a friend as we left to take care of his remains, but I never— For as long as I lived in Little Ala Mhigo, I never found out where he was.”

“I’m sorry.”

“But I did see that friend again, on this side of the Wall. He told me he buried Gotwin himself near the Sepulchre. Twenty years, and I never knew my brother was interred just next door. Some irony, eh?”

Sairsel frowned. “Why didn't he reach out to you? The friend?”

“He didn’t know I was alive, I suppose; we lived in different worlds. Or, if he knew, he didn’t want to show his face in Little Ala Mhigo. I could have reached out to him, but I… didn’t. I was angry. He was no friend to the Resistance, at the time.”

Of all the ways to feel, Sairsel was rediscovering the looming shadow of doubt that he'd only barely succeeded in dismissing; just as he was finding a place for himself in Ala Mhigo, he walked to Bloodhowe with his mother fearing that this was no place for him. He looked upon the spire of the Tomb of the Errant Sword, its silhouette clearer and clearer upon the horizon, as though he were trampling sacred ground.

“Are you—are you certain you want me there for this? I’m…”

“Would I have asked you to come if I didn’t want you there?”

Sairsel shook his head, his voice creeping on the edge of sheepish. “No, I don’t imagine you would.”

“Gotwin loved you like a son,” Morgana said. The words came all at once, landing at Sairsel’s feet with the force of a fire blast; he didn’t know how to handle their shape, as though it didn’t belong in his hands.

Gotwin Arroway was his mother’s brother. He knew that; he knew that, for a few months, he and his uncle had been of the same world. Still, he’d never stopped to imagine what he might have meant to this man whose life had been ripped away long before he could ever remember him. Sairsel had always thought of himself as something from outside what should have been his mother’s life. He didn’t know how to belong within it.

She noticed his silence. “Does that surprise you?”

“I knew you were close,” he said clumsily. “I suppose I never realized he even knew me. He died—”

“Before you’d even seen a summer, aye. But this is something you’ll learn once you have children in your life: it takes only an instant. With you, he had more than instants,” Morgana said, her eyes distant upon the sky. “He looked at you with as much wonder as he’d looked at Mathias when he was born. You were a tiny little thing in his arms.”

Sairsel didn’t know what to say to that. How could he? He rarely knew how to speak to his mother on a normal day, let alone while she was recalling a past that was lodged between her ribs like a blade.

But she didn’t seek any words from him. She sniffed and pushed on towards Bloodhowe, her footsteps heavy and intent, as she lay her hand against the pommel of the scimitar at her right hip.

“After we moved on to Ul’dah, it was Gotwin who kept in touch with your father; they sent letters back and forth like they were courting. He wanted to know everything about you. Tried to tell me all about it, but I never wanted to hear.”

“Why not?” Sairsel dared to ask, aching. _Why didn’t you care?_

These past few months, he’d been learning to understand her reasons, to make sense of how he could live alongside her after a lifetime of absence—to forgive, for his own sake, if not forget. Some days, he even did forget. She had left him to protect him from herself, to keep him safe with a father who wouldn’t get himself killed as she might; he could accept that.

But it never went away, the nagging hurt. The part of him that resented her.

“Didn’t care to twist the knife. That’s how it felt, without you,” Morgana said stiffly. “Thought I was going to drown in my own blood if I let myself miss you.”

Sairsel swallowed.

“When he died, it was like I lost you for good, too,” she added, looking at him.

“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice rough in the quiet. The sand had crept into his voice, too, now—even if only barely.

They were silent as their feet touched sacred ground; silent as they made their way down into the darkness of the Tomb of the Errant Sword, its halls empty of bodies. All that was given to this earth was steel—and steel was all Morgana had to give.

She knelt in the low light of a candle with Sairsel at her back, and slowly drew the scimitar, holding it in both of her hands. Her breath was audible in the silence, deep with emotion, as she laid down the sword.

“Ancestors, receive the blade of Gotwin Arroway, fallen in Thanalan,” she said, her voice steady but sapped of strength. “He died for honour, and for a brother.”

Only silence answered her, but Morgana bowed her head nonetheless. She pulled a worn strip of embroidered fabric with patterns like delicate feathers from her pocket and tied it to the hilt of the sword with a length of leather cord.

“Remember his beloved, Havisa, fallen in the Black Shroud. She died with strength, as only a mother can.”

It wasn’t until she raised a hand to wipe roughly at her face that Sairsel realized she wept. Silently, he knelt down beside her and reached out—his hand hesitant—to touch her shoulder. Her own hand rose, fingers blindly grasping his.

Perhaps no gods or ancestors would answer her in a voice that she could hear, but Gotwin and Havisa were not forgotten, and Morgana was not alone.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter features saskia emery, an actress turned spy and morgana's former lover who stayed behind in ala mhigo during its occupation.

Saskia was even more beautiful than she had been when they were twenty—or perhaps it was merely the simple fact that they stood in reach of each other, alive and whole, that coloured Morgana’s view of her with elation. Her eyes still crinkled when she smiled, dark and bright and glittering like diamond sunlight on the waters of Loch Seld; the thin lines of crow’s feet added shape to that smile. Two decades of occupation had worn her, but never tarnished her glow.

She was brighter, now, if anything: the light hair she’d inherited from her white-star mother sat like a length of braided gold upon her shoulder, woven together like a fish’s tail. Back then, she’d always dyed it, darkened it to brown-black and Ala Mhigan violet and indigo and everything in between—for pleasure as much as it was to hide her fair tones. It fell naturally around her face, softened her. 

Somehow, the years seemed to have made her even more gentle, though the steel was unmistakable under her silk; the Empire had turned them all to metal or to stone, and Saskia had survived it. There was even less restraint, now, in the way she reached for Morgana’s hand, than there had been when they were young and foolish.

“You look sad,” Saskia said gently, her voice deeper. More subdued.

Morgana almost laughed, but it would have cut like a blade. The tea Saskia had made her was colder in her hand than it was warm, by now; it had spread through her with the loose ease of alcohol, warmed her as the stone of the promenade cooled under their feet. 

“These last few days have been some of the happiest of my life.” She shifted her hand underneath Saskia’s, touching the tips of her fingers to the inside of her wrist. Saskia had always made her softer around the edges—that had been before, but Morgana was realizing that perhaps that weakness had not entirely faded away. “And they’re all the sweeter now for seeing you well.”

“And you.” Saskia smiled and pulled Morgana close, standing on the tips of her toes to press a kiss to her forehead. 

They were not the same women they had once been—little more than girls playing at starting their lives. But the last few weeks had taught Morgana one thing: that the past clung back. Once it sank into her, her heart might sink back regardless of whether she wished it. The past lay in Saskia’s hands, in her eyes, in her lips; something in Morgana called to it.

Too much of her life lay unfinished. She closed her eyes at the fleeting touch of Saskia’s mouth to her brow, let go of her hand to touch the tips of her fingers to her cheek.

“There is something I need to ask,” Saskia said, eyes downcast, as she touched Morgana’s arm. The feeling of another’s hands on the fresh scars still almost made her flinch, but she felt like a cliff beside Saskia. Unmoving, steady against the crashing of waves and the beating of wind.

“Ask it.”

Saskia’s voice came as half a whisper, laden with regret. “Do you resent me?”

“I did,” Morgana said without a moment’s hesitation. She knew Saskia spoke of the night their paths had split, and there was no other answer. Her heart had always broken for more than Ala Mhigo alone. “For a time. But I resented you because I missed you, or—or I was afraid for you.”

Saskia nodded, silent, her gaze falling. Morgana never wanted to see her like this; she tipped her chin up with a finger, looked into the near-black of her eyes, framed by pale lashes. “No longer, Saskia,” she said. “We both made our choices for our families. My family died halfway across Eorzea. If I’d lost you with them, I’d— I wouldn’t have survived it.”

All at once, Morgana pulled away, turning to lean over the parapet overlooking the Lochs; she swallowed down the rising tide as she watched the sea of clouds, the red mountains. “What’s done is done.” She sniffed. “No use dwelling and regretting. It’s to the future we need to look, now.”

Saskia was silent for only a few heartbeats, but it seemed a great chasm. She leaned against the parapet, too, shoulder to shoulder with Morgana.

“So long as looking forward does not keep you from seeing what is beside you,” Saskia said. She tilted her head, her attention focused on the lines of Morgana’s face; it made her wonder what it was that she saw. Whatever it was, it pulled at her lips to form a sad sort of smile. A smile for the lost. “I recall a time when you’d wave me off if I so much as uttered a word about the future.”

The memory hit Morgana like a crashing wave, like it belonged to someone else. But it had been her, young and brash and biting into everything around her. ‘Let's not,’ she would say, usually sealing the topic away with a kiss. ‘I would rather enjoy the now.’

“Oh, gods. You’re right,” Morgana said, letting out a puff of a sigh. “I’d forgotten.”

“You’ve changed. It took over.”

Seeing the regret weighing down Saskia’s gaze, Morgana grasped at a new memory, intent on dispelling some of the shade the last twenty years had drawn over them. “I had started changing by the time we left,” she pointed out. “When Mathias was soon to be born. We’d started to make plans.”

Saskia’s expression turned for the bittersweet. “True. A child of our own. You remember?”

“Of course I do. That conversation we had with Gotwin about him siring the babe with you was one of the most haunting of my young life,” Morgana said, a smile tugging at her lips. It soon fell; she looked down at her hands. “And I thought of it constantly before my son was born. I was always thinking of you.”

“You were?” Saskia asked softly.

Morgana nodded. “It never felt right, a child in my belly. I thought it should have been you—for us, together. I… I still look at him, sometimes, my son— I wonder what he might be like if he had been yours.”

“So you do torture yourself,” Saskia said, swaying towards her to bump their shoulders together.

“I am not without faults,” Morgana said with a meager smile. “And perhaps I learned it from him. He’s kind, you know—which, I suppose, is more like you than me. But not to himself. Always looking back over his shoulder.”

“You think he might be different if he had been mine?”

“I’m certain of it.”

“But he’s yours, Morgana,” Saskia said gently. “You have it in you to help your son to look forward and be kinder to himself just as much as I could—but you need to let him help you, too. To see what is beside you.”

Morgana sighed and closed her eyes, tipping her head to the side to rest against Saskia’s. She wanted to tell her that she had missed her gentle heart and her way with words every day of her life, but the words wouldn’t come. They belonged on the tongue of a woman she no longer knew how to be.

“You always found it irksome when you knew I was right about something,” Saskia said of her silence, the smile shining through her voice. Morgana chuckled.

“Nothing irksome in it now. But I am glad you’ve become confident.”

“Doing away with my uncertainties was the only way I found to survive the Garleans. Anything less, and they thought they were right to call you savage.” Saskia disdainfully scrunched up her nose. “It almost feels too good to be true, walking these streets without having to answer to some cock of a bucket-head.”

Morgana snorted. “Those Resistance helmets are much more pleasant to look at, aren’t they?”

“Aye,” Saskia said with a smile. “I was wondering why I wasn’t seeing you in uniform.”

“Well, I’m not on duty right now. And, besides—I’m not sure that I will be again. I suppose we’ll see how the summit goes; I don’t think even the commander herself knows what will become of the Resistance yet.” 

Saskia hummed. “What do you want?” she asked. “For yourself. From the future.”

Maddeningly, Morgana thought of Raubahn. She knew, at the very least, that she did not want what he did—and that made her insides twist.

“I don’t know,” she said stiffly. “All this time fighting, all this time hoping, and I never even stopped to think about what might come after. Feels like I ought to pick my life back up where I left it, but it’s been so long that there’s nothing left of the way it used to be.”

A part of her hoped that Saskia might say that she was still here; that they could start again. But Saskia did not say it.

“I don’t quite know, either,” she said.

The other part of Morgana was still caught on the question of what she wanted, clamouring with an answer she didn’t want to swallow: _I don’t want him to leave._

*******

There was a trace of blood on Sairsel’s cheek. His every gesture still had the stiff harshness of a body that had seen battle, his voice taut as a bowstring.

“Where in the bloody fuck were you?” he demanded. He bent down, planting a foot down on an ananta’s corpse to pull out an arrow with a squelching sound that did not make him bat an eyelash.

“I was—” Morgana said, raising a vague hand to point to nowhere over her shoulder only to cut herself off. “What happened?”

“Fucking Qalyana happened. Summoned a primal in the middle of the Hall of the Griffin.”

“Twelve,” Morgana breathed, dread filling her veins.

“We had to fight some of our own. They were already tempered,” Sairsel said through gritted teeth. So battle alone hadn’t put him in that state: it was killing someone who should never have been an enemy. He sniffed, glancing over his shoulder. “Ashelia and Arenvald put her down. But it could have been a lot worse. Lyse—Commander Hext, she— she and General Aldynn fought her. Without the Echo.”

Morgana took it like a punch to the gut. Her breath fell short, and her mind raced ahead. _Fool._ How could he—how could they both have been so reckless? Foolhardiness was to be expected of someone as young as Lyse, even if she had wisdom beyond her years enough to lead their people, but—

She gritted her teeth. Never could she understand him running back to Ul’dah, but letting himself fall to a primal to assuage his guilty conscience for leaving his home behind, she couldn’t even begin to forgive.

“Are they—” she asked, her voice scraping.

“Sound of mind and body,” Sairsel said, his gaze furtive. The muscles in his jaw tensed. “The Butcher fought, too. Lyse took her out of her cage. She saved their lives—all our lives.”

Morgana barely heard his words; her eyes kept pulling her towards the palace, like a tether stretched as far as it might go. She did not want to find out what might happen if she let it snap. “They’re all still inside?”

Sairsel’s shoulders were low. They drew in towards his heart. “Aye.”

At first, there was no question in Morgana’s mind, no doubt: she was who she had been before the Wall, decisive as the path of an arrow. She patted Sairsel’s arm in passing, more comradely than maternal, and got as far as three steps away from him before she heard him sniff again. Her feet stilled.

He was all that mattered beside her; all that lay ahead. 

Damn her memories. Damn the past she had dragged into the present as though it might be a part of her future. She turned, walked back towards her son, and did what no one had ever done for her when the sword she sold had seemed to bear the weight of the world in her hand.

“Sairsel,” she said, taking him by the shoulders—shoulders wider and stronger than they had been back in Little Ala Mhigo. “Are you hurt?”

He frowned, shook his head. His gaze still fell towards the bodies, so Morgana gently took the bow from his hands and slung it over her shoulder. “It was a mercy and a kindness. They weren’t our own anymore, and anyone wearing that uniform would rather be dead than turning on their comrades.”

“I know,” Sairsel said stiffly. “I only—”

“Telling yourself doesn’t make it feel true, and neither does someone telling you the same,” she finished for him. Her gaze softened. “I know. But you have to fight it. You have the strength.”

For the first time, his eyes unwaveringly met hers—with cynicism to veil his doubt. “You really believe that?” he asked. Even his sarcasm sounded weary.

“I do,” Morgana said. It astonished her to think that, for once, her uncompromising nature served rather than harmed; she knew it had done Sairsel more ill than good over the last few months to be met with a brick wall at every turn. “Do you want to know why I think it?”

“Because I’m your son and I can’t be weak?” he suggested with a feeble, bitter half-smile. “Because I’m Gotwin’s nephew?”

Morgana looked over the promenade, hoping it would draw Sairsel’s own gaze. The kind thing might have been to preserve him, to make it so he didn’t have to look again at what had come to pass, but Morgana was not the kind one. The only kindness he needed was his own.

“You didn’t run,” she said, insistent. “You fought without the Echo, too, didn't you?”

“It’s easy to fight when you don’t have to walk past the strong ones,” Sairsel said. He motioned to his bow with his chin, but didn’t ask for it back. Not for now.

Morgana, for the most part, chose to ignore the comment. “You’re stupid, but you’re not weak. Stupid is fixable.”

Of all the ways to react, Sairsel laughed—a mirthless laugh that broke Morgana’s heart, but a laugh nonetheless. He was strong. He would survive this as he had survived everything else.

“Thank you, Mother, really. ‘Stupid’ is the only praise I ever needed from you.”

“It is one thing to be brave, Sairsel,” Morgana said, matching his tone. “It is another when that bravery is suicidal. The important part is knowing which is which.”

Sairsel’s frown narrowed his eyes as he considered her words. He opened his mouth, his lips forming no words, closed it, then spoke at last: “I couldn’t— I had to fight. Having the Echo doesn’t make Ashelia invincible.”

“I could have told you that the second we met,” Morgana said smartly, and immediately regretted it as Sairsel’s expression closed, if only for a moment. He rolled his eyes and went on. 

“She’s better, but she’s not _well._ So I couldn’t. Not after… not after the tempered. It had to mean something.”

To that, Morgana could find no words—no words, at least, that could preserve what little remained of Sairsel’s spirits. She had been younger than he was when she first came to realize that death was meaningless, and then she had suffered for it as the years passed. There had been no meaning in Gotwin’s throat being cut open by rich men’s spite, in Havisa meeting her end at a hateful Wood-Wailer’s spear; in young men and women lost at Baelsar’s Wall as though their blood and pain were currency for one of their own; in brave Resistance fighters living to rip their home back from the Empire’s claws only to die a primal’s puppets.

Morgana had stopped looking for sense in death that was not chosen, but Sairsel was young and beholden to a gentler heart than he would admit to having. 

_It had to mean something._

A young man searching for meaning somewhere under the weight of battle as though redemption or reparation lay within. It was too familiar by half.

*******

Later, she walked that path again—alone and under a velvet blue sky slowly coming alive with blinking stars. She climbed the palace steps, passed through silent halls that seemed to both forget and remember every second of the horrors they had seen. Today, weeks ago; through twenty years of occupation and a mad king’s reign of blood and all the ages of a nation. Bricks chipped by blades and bullets and scrubbed clean of blood, scorched black, drinking the echoes of pain. She walked floors that had seen her twisting and screaming herself raw as fire ate at her skin.

The Hall of the Griffin still crackled with aether, but traces of the primal and the fighting were gone. Morgana paid it all little mind; the throne room had seen far worse days in its history, and she hardly had any reason to linger. Twenty years ago, she would have never even dreamed of standing there—much less passing through as though it was a thoroughfare leading to a tavern.

She climbed more stairs, and emerged once more into the night. The sky stretched high and far over the Royal Menagerie. The sound of her own footsteps grated her own senses, too loud in the quiet stillness.

And her voice, too, but she couldn’t help speaking as she fell in at Raubahn’s side, keeping to his left. She couldn’t leave it at silence.

“You’re a fool,” she said.

Everything about Raubahn’s demeanour came softer in a way Morgana hardly recognized; not because it was not in his nature, but simply for the fact that he never seemed to have the time for it. In quick, stolen glances his way—it was easier to gaze upon the sky—Morgana could hardly tell what she saw in the lines of his face, in that unassuming smile that drew up his lips. Peace? Resignation? Weariness?

She had only ever learned to read a man’s face, his eyes above all, in battle. This was so far from it that she barely knew how to stand.

“I suppose I am,” he said humbly, “though you could stand to be more precise.”

“Don’t tell me you’ve already forgotten about fighting a primal—what, three hours ago?”

“No.”

“Or done something even madder since then.”

“Not yet.”

“That you know of,” Morgana said.

Raubahn smiled again. This time, Morgana thought it was most definitely weary; too soft around the edges to merely be peace. “That I know of,” he agreed. Stars filled the spaces of his silence. “Your son fought as well.”

“I know. Told him it was stupid, too.”

“He seems a good lad.”

Morgana nodded, her expression giving no sign of the pride that swelled within her breast. She did not need to be told of Sairsel’s qualities, not after all the work of trying to know him when he was almost as stiffly guarded as she was, and not by any man—but Raubahn’s opinion mattered to her far more than she might wish. He was half a legend, with a son of his own who was courageous and fierce and caring, and he had seen her brought low by the mere thought of who Sairsel might become when he had been but a babe.

Those words meant more to her than many of the things he had said to her. 

For a heartbeat, she almost told him as much.

“I know,” she said instead.

Silence found them once more, but Raubahn was not idly watching the stars as Morgana did to divert her own focus. His smile courted the bittersweet. “Have you naught else to say to me?”

“Was there something you wished to hear from me, General?” Morgana said. She felt as though she were spitting poison, but only drop by drop.

Slowly, Raubahn breathed out through his nose. “No. I suppose not.”

He turned his gaze back towards the sky; only then did Morgana chance a glance at him. She thought her words might have soured him, but it seemed she was the only one in reach of her own poison. Was he so secure in his decision that her disapproval left him utterly unbothered? The thought pushed anger through her ribs. Were she in his place, leaving Ala Mhigo and returning to the land that had been little more than a prison to her might have torn her apart. 

And yet—nostalgia was the only thing she could see on his face.

“It almost seems strange, a peaceful farewell, for you and I,” he said after a moment.

Morgana chuckled mirthlessly. “I could think of a threat or two, if you like.” She swallowed the emotion of the memory, the horror and the pain still raw in her throat after twenty years, and the new bitterness. Her voice came with such calm it almost seemed to belong in another body. “You’re leaving on the morrow, I imagine?”

“Aye,” Raubahn said gently. “Ala Mhigo no longer needs me.”

“That’s a bold fucking claim,” Morgana scoffed. 

A part of her wanted to move, to stand in front of him so that he could no longer look at the sky as though it were the last of something, to shake his shoulders and remind him of who he was. After a reign of blood and twenty years of occupation, Ala Mhigo needed the good men and the legends more than ever; what fool could not realize that he was both?

“I would not begin our alliance with a free nation by interfering in its affairs.”

Morgana turned her gaze towards him, frowning. “‘Our’ alliance?” she asked, bewildered. “Ul’dah’s?”

“You know what I meant.”

“No. I don’t.”

“Ala Mhigo is in good hands.”

“And yours are—what? Bound?” Morgana asked. She closed her mouth, pushed out a sharp sigh through her nose. “Don’t answer that.”

She would not tell him that Ala Mhigo needed him, if he could not see it for himself. It was the part of her that was afraid it might sound too much like _I need you_ that kept her quiet, that moved her as far away from the words as she could be.

“What of the Ala Mhigan Brigade?”

Better curiosity, even if it made her seem interested in the Flames’ affairs, than clinging to the past.

“Disbanded,” Raubahn said, as relieved as he was saddened. “Too many have chosen to stay, and I am glad for it. Those who would return will become a special unit dedicated to bringing aid and protection to refugees throughout Thanalan as much as the rest of Ul’dah.” He hesitated for a moment, then said: “There is yet a place for you within those ranks, if…”

“Do not insult me, Raubahn,” Morgana said, sharper than he deserved. “The only way I’m ever leaving Gyr Abania again is in chains.”

Infuriatingly, Raubahn almost smiled; she could hear it return it to his voice, gentle with some strange, fond resignation. “Some things never change, do they.”

It was not a question, and Morgana had no mind to give an answer. He turned, tried to reach out for her, but she ambled away before he could touch her. She kept on dictating the terms: she faced him, kept her distance, extended her right hand—her thumb turned out, palm upwards. At the very least, their comradeship deserved it.

“It was an honour to fight at your side,” she said honestly, drowning out every other part of her that was not a warrior. “On the bloodsands and on this ground.”

Raubahn’s hand was heavy in hers. For a moment, he seemed to want for words. “I won’t forget it,” he said. “And I am glad for the peaceful farewell. May you find the freedom you deserve, Morgana.”

Morgana nodded stiffly. “Safe journeys.”

She left before anything else could be said; before she could feel the weight of what was not. As she trotted down the stairs, she nearly barrelled into Ashelia Riot.

Of all the people.

“Morgana,” said Ashelia. It seemed like more than a greeting, but Morgana pretended it didn’t.

“Riot,” she answered curtly, and kept her eyes forward—towards home.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning: this chapter contains explicit sexual content. 18+ only!

Morgana no longer slept as lightly as she had for the better part of twenty years. In the Shroud, anger and grief and a babe in her belly had kept her awake; the Coliseum had seen her restless and on edge; and in Little Ala Mhigo, she had been enraged, lost, haunted. Too wary. Most people in the Resistance slept with one eye open, and it had become almost second nature to Morgana.

Then, along came home—in occupied Gyr Abania, the lightest sleep of her life—and, finally, freedom.

And pain, at first: her burns had long kept her awake, only to make her sleep like the dead when she could be sedated enough. A part of her had clung to vigilance for a time, as though the imperials were like to return and throw more magitek, more bullets, more _fire_ at them until death was all that remained. She’d wake up with a start, more than once a night, thinking the shouts of the drunken and the celebrating to be alarmed calls to arms.

But she was beginning to believe in the feeling of freedom, and with a roof over her head and silence under its safety, she could finally rest. Silence was an easy thing to have, within empty walls; strange as it was to live in such quiet, Morgana grew accustomed to it. She was even growing to like it—and the way it let her body unravel in the night, beckoned by the depth of that stillness into a void of her own. 

A few seasons past, she would have heard the footsteps breaking her hard-won peace in moments, even fast asleep. She would have heard the creaking of the door, the whisper of soles on the rug she’d bought from a merchant the very day after the liberation; she would have felt the presence, the shifting of air and aether.

She slept through it. When the footsteps stopped beside her bed, Morgana did not stir. Wakefulness only began to pull at her as the edge of the mattress slowly sank, ripping through her peace all at once when a hand touched her cheek.

She snapped awake with a dagger in her fist, swept up from under her pillow, and stopped the blade at Raubahn’s throat. The first blush of dawn bathed her room in cold grey-blue light, still too pale as it heralded the sunrise. Morgana’s heart was racing, her mind rushing to clear itself of sleep and make sense of what was in front of her. No amount of clarity and consciousness could make her understand it.

“Morgana,” Raubahn said, as though he were careful not to wake someone else in this empty place. The light behind her seemed to consume the colour of his eyes, make it its own; it turned them dark and grave. He gently moved the point of the knife away from his throat with a finger. “It’s me.”

The first thing Morgana grasped, on instinct, was anger. She lowered the blade, but didn’t put it away. “What in the seven hells are you doing here?”

“Do you always sleep with a knife?”

He should have known the answer. Morgana couldn’t fathom how he might not.

“I have for the past nineteen years,” she said, and without missing a beat: “Why are you in my home?”

Raubahn smiled, small and tight. “I was hoping you might have been awake; I wanted to see you.”

Sleep had always left her too vulnerable; it gave her fears and dread she would never allow into her heart in all her waking hours. And now, as she heard him say those words, felt the low rumble of his voice so near and quiet, she ached. It was the last thing she wanted, to ache for him—to want to pull him close and hold him in her arms and ask him not to leave, the way Saskia had asked her a lifetime ago. She couldn’t bear to let him hurt her.

“We’ve said everything that can be said without it turning ugly. I don’t do fond farewells, so let’s both not search for last words that we don’t need.”

“I am not here for farewells or last words,” Raubahn said. Morgana couldn’t recognize the lightness in his voice; couldn’t perceive the absence of chains. 

He reached out, brushed his fingertips to her cheekbone—so lightly, so fleetingly that he seemed to be afraid she might flinch under his touch. She was still as a mountain, waiting, aching. 

“I would have you consider this my true homecoming.”

Morgana’s heart scraped against her ribs, but she only frowned. “What are you saying?”

“My time in Ul’dah has come to an end. Her Grace— Nanamo has freed me from my oaths once and for good.”

All at once, the walls blinding Morgana fell away: she looked into Raubahn’s eyes and saw his relief, his serenity, his hope. And, Twelve—she almost let those same feelings fill her chest. Her fingers tightened around the hilt of the knife, her grip verging on the painful.

“This is what you want?” she asked.

“Aye,” he said, unfaltering.

For a moment, Morgana could only breathe—she could hardly do even that. She looked down at the blade, no longer understanding why it was still in her hand. “And the first thing you did with that newfound freedom was to break into my home while I slept so that you could tell me the news,” she said, an incredulous chuckle pushing against her deadpan tone.

“You hadn’t barred the door,” Raubahn said lightly.

“Of course not; we’re free,” Morgana said, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world. There was no part of her that could tolerate feeling locked inside even a place that was her own. “That’s what the knife is for.”

Raubahn agreed with a thoughtful hum, then smiled—soft, rare. This time, when he lifted his hand to her cheek, it was not to take it away. His thumb brushed a cheekbone, only shifting to gently move back a loose strand of her hair. 

“I wanted to see you,” he said once more, his voice falling low and quiet. “More than anything.”

Morgana hated the part of her that made her hands so heavy, but she found that she could fight against it as well as she could fight anything else. She slid her left hand up Raubahn’s chest, coming to rest against the back of his neck, and let the pull of him draw her in to touch their foreheads together. As she closed her eyes, she let go of something heavy, some sharp burden that no longer belonged on her shoulders or between her ribs.

No more battles.

“Welcome home,” she whispered, her voice incapable of more.

The knife clattered to the ground as Raubahn pressed his mouth to hers, but all Morgana could hear was his silent question—and all she wanted was to answer in kind. For once, she basked in her empty hands: empty to cup his face, to pull him close, to touch what was in front of her and know that it was real. She parted her lips and let him in. 

For a moment, that was all that mattered. His mouth on hers, his hand warm and gentle against her cheek; his presence, his body close enough to hold. Their moments of stolen intimacy between Castrum Oriens and now seemed as distant as though they belonged in another life, with their time in the Coliseum. They were not at war. They were not fighting to forget. They were not bound by the unsaid.

Morgana wanted him so badly that her chest felt hollow and too full in equal measure. She curled her fingers in the fabric of his cloak, pulled him against her; pressed her palm to his shoulder to support him when he shifted his weight, his hand falling to the bed and then trailing over her hip. 

“You’re not crushing me,” she said before Raubahn could ask, knowing by the way he bore his own weight that the question was on his mind. “Stay close to me.”

Raubahn smiled against her lips. She could feel his voice down to her very fingertips. “I would be nowhere else.”

It took some adjusting to free his hand: Morgana’s shoulders against the wall, her pillows bunched behind her lower back; her knees pulled up and Raubahn’s between them—and it was worth it. He touched her the way he always had, as though she were some beautiful, unbreakable thing. Always tender, but never fragile. His fingers trailed down the center of her chest, parting the already loose laces on her thin linen shirt before cupping her breast through the fabric. Morgana arched against him, shifted her hips.

Breath already came hotter and sharper through her lungs, and she was still grasping at his cloak. Her fingers were on the verge of feverish as they searched blindly for the clasp on his pauldron, undid it—she tossed it aside by one of the horns—and pulled off his cloak.

He wasn’t wearing his sword, she realized as her hands moved down his sides. He’d left it at the door—a gesture of the truly home. No Ala Mhigan would carry a sword beyond the threshold of their own home, or that of a true friend or comrade; the thought of Raubahn’s sword sitting beside her own at the door struck her heart like the clashing of blades. She stopped, her fingers pressed against firm muscle, and looked at him.

“What is it?” Raubahn asked, glancing at her before kissing her neck.

“Nothing,” Morgana said. She didn’t understand why it seemed something had fallen into place, but his mouth made her forget everything but the clarity of the feeling. She sighed and closed her eyes, her voice tumbling down her throat to leave only a whisper. “This feels right, is all.”

Raubahn’s hand slid down over her belly, and he bent lower, pressing his lips the curve where her breast began, just over her heart. “Aye,” he said, just as low.

He was already kissing down her front, his fingers pushing up the hem of her shirt before smoothing over her thigh. His touch sent a chill of fire coursing over Morgana’s skin, anticipating—she wanted the heat of his mouth, but she wanted the rest of him even more. His closeness.

She nudged his shoulder, tugged at his collar. “Not that,” she murmured, a smile breaking onto her lips at the look of surprise Raubahn had for her. She was just as astounded as he was. “Not today.”

“All right.” He shared in her smile with ease, moving back up as she tapped her lips with a finger to kiss her, slow and deep; leaving her breathless. “May I touch you, then?”

Morgana let go of a dry chuckle. “Touch me, fuck me—just don’t go far from me.”

“I’m here.”

He was here, and Morgana wanted to touch him as dearly as he wanted to touch her. She did not let even one of his fingers touch her until the rest of his clothing and armour were on her floor—and then her hands roamed his skin like a map, tracing scars and muscle.

And Raubahn touched her. His hand slid down her front again, thumb circling a nipple under her shirt on the way; he watched with heavy eyes how Morgana's muscles shifted under every touch, how her lips parted as his hand slipped down between her thighs. At the first touch, she sighed, eyes falling briefly shut—but she couldn't keep herself blind to him for too long.

He stroked slow, at first, with long swipes of his fingers and palm that had her hips tipping up to meet him. Morgana tried to keep her head, to match his pace as she stroked along his length through the fabric of his undergarments, but it wasn't long before a finger slipped between her folds, then another—and her breath was quick and hot and her mind was unwinding itself to wrap around him. Her wetness guided him, and he drew slick circles, and his thumb rubbed her clit almost too gently, just heavy enough.

Some needy sound escaped Morgana's throat. She sank lower down her mattress in the shifting of her hips, trying to press closer, and gripped his left shoulder as much for his balance as to give herself an anchor. Raubahn knew her too well, he always had—and now he knew her slow, wanting, keening in a way she'd never allowed herself. He watched her as though he were discovering something, his gaze heavy on her as he slipped a finger inside her.

And, gods, she heard his breath hitch as her hand stilled against his cock. She wanted to hear it again, but instead she let out another half-strangled moan as he slipped the finger out, stroked her until her knees were falling open, and entered her again. 

Morgana no longer knew whether she was fucking herself on his fingers, or he was fucking her, but she knew she trembled as the wave built, low and burning in her belly—and crashed over her, ripping a moan from her lips that met Raubahn's mouth. He kissed her deep as she rocked against his hand and shook and dug her fingers into his shoulder. Her grip softened enough that she could tap two fingers against his skin. She felt as though she were on fire; he knew to stop, slip his fingers out. Gently, he rubbed his hand over her inner thigh as she gained some manner of a hold back over her thoughts.

Her thoughts, but not her breath. “Why aren’t you fucking me?” she asked, panting. By now, she was lying on her back again. She slid a hand over his chest and the other into his undergarments.

He let out a sharp sigh.

“I wanted to see this first.” He licked his lips, managed a smile, and stilled her hand long enough to speak in earnest. “We have all the time in the world.”

Morgana drew him closer: his chest almost flush against hers, his hand beside her hip on the mattress to support him, his cock hard against her thigh. She still wanted more—all of him. A part of her stood on the very edge of some words, but they wouldn’t come, and filth could never suit this moment, so she took it upon herself to rid him of the last of his clothing. And she kissed him, because that was easy.

“Give me a hand,” Raubahn said, motioning towards his left shoulder with his chin. “Balance.”

“I’ve got you,” Morgana said. She anchored her elbow down on the mattress, pressed her palm to his shoulder. It had become familiar, the way they adapted, and Morgana was beginning to feel something dauntingly beautiful in the way he spoke to her when he asked for it. The trust.

In all the years between the bloodsands and Castrum Oriens, she’d had a few women, some nights in the desert—but never trust, and never like this. None that she would take or that she could give. She hadn’t realized how trust had made her ache worse than wanting for a lover ever could.

Her own words resonated within the spaces of her mind. _I’ve got you._ Hard to believe it was her own kindness, but perhaps not with Raubahn; there was no surprise in the way their bodies and their minds seemed to know each other without words—not anymore. He knew her, saw that she had some kindness, and Morgana knew that he needed every part of it that she had to give. 

She held her hand against his shoulder as he shifted and ghosted his fingers along her hip, and she trailed a feather-light touch down his side, as if to show him. More than ever, she wanted him to know that she could be gentle; that the way she had him was gentle. And if he would be close, she would keep him close. She kissed him while he took his cock and slowly guided himself inside her, still wet and wanting, and moaned into his mouth as he filled her.

Raubahn’s patience—restraint?—was worthy of all the saints. With a leg wound around his waist, Morgana was trembling by the time he was buried to the hilt—and even then, he stilled on top of her with only a shaky sigh to show his pleasure.

He dropped his weight on his forearm, just beside her head, brushing away the hair from her face before touching his brow to hers. “Twelve,” he breathed, and Morgana felt that single word stab through her chest. She could almost feel his heart beating against hers.

“Do I make you feel good?” she heard herself ask, unsure whether her own voice sounded to her ears more like that of an uncertain waif or some tawdry temptress from a two-gil erotic leaflet sold outside the Quicksand. 

Blessedly, Raubahn only seemed to hear her, and her alone. The only answer he could muster was a soft groan that said everything that needed to be said, followed by another kiss that left Morgana breathless. She ran her nails down his back, too short for anything but to make him shiver.

“Please,” she murmured, urging him on. The fullness already had her burning, her first orgasm chasing the next, building upon what his fingers alone had drawn out of her.

Only a few thrusts—slow and deep—and she tumbled over the edge again, her head tipping back and her spine arching as she moaned low in her throat. Raubahn moved in time with the wave, wrapping his arm around her to keep her hips close, and he bent his head to kiss her chest as the breath shuddered below her ribs. She tightened around him, again and again as she rode out her pleasure, and his breath seemed to come shorter every time.

“Don’t stop,” Morgana said. All of her felt like flames, but the fire was blissful; his weight, his warmth, his pleasure—every part of Raubahn like a spark on her skin. She ran her hand back up over his spine, trailing over his neck, and cupped his cheek as the pace of his thrusts began to falter, growing deeper again.

“Morgana.”

She tightened her leg around him at the sound of her name, soft and low and beautiful as it fell from his tongue; drawing him in, keeping him close. He spilled inside her, a hot rush that Morgana’s hips tipped up to meet, her cunt throbbing. She loved the sound of Raubahn’s voice then, half a grunt and half a moan that tumbled free from his lips. She loved holding him as he finished, her chest rising to meet his. She loved the way his mouth met hers for a kiss.

She loved the silence, filled with the croaking of crows greeting the dawn, because it spoke on its own; there was nothing unsaid. She loved how he shivered when she trailed her fingers down his spine, basking in the haze, their bodies still joined.

Morgana wished she knew the words to say it all, but they were foreign on her tongue. For once, it didn’t really matter. If Raubahn had sought her out, he had to know—after all these years, he had to. 

And he was in her arms because he did.

“I’d appreciate it if you didn’t fall asleep on me,” Morgana said after a moment of stillness, though she made no effort to stop tracing her fingertips over his skin.

“I am not sleeping,” Raubahn said with a weary smile to his voice, his breathing slow. He pushed himself up onto his arm, slipping out of Morgana to lie beside her with a kiss to her jawline.

“You should be.” She patted his flank. “Rest. I’ll bring towels.”

The sun was nearer and nearer to rising when Morgana tip-toed her way back to her bed and dropped beside Raubahn, stretching her now-shaky legs out and pulling up the blankets to her shoulders. She’d picked up the knife and set it down within reach, but not under the pillow; instead of tucking her hand underneath it to touch the hilt as she always did, she stretched the fingers of her left hand and hesitantly laid her palm over Raubahn's chest. It rose and fell slowly, wide and scarred, with a peace that was too rare for all that he deserved. 

For a few breaths, Morgana watched her own scars, the strange map of warped skin that had burned away old stories: she remembered the pale scars on her knuckles that spoke of too many fights without protecting her hands, the long line that once ran down alongside the bone where an old shield had shattered and splintered and nearly cost her the arm, the dark freckles near her elbow that Nimaurel would trace as though they were a constellation—all of them gone, overwritten. A small price to pay, perhaps, to see Ala Mhigo freed. To see Sairsel walking Gyr Abania as though the land itself spoke to him, Saskia alive and whole and smiling, Raubahn without a sword at his hip or a frown on his brow.

She wondered if there was something to see in her that made the suffering seem worth it.

Almost imperceptibly, Raubahn stirred: his fingers touched her arm, feather-light, and he spoke without opening his eyes. “You don’t mind me staying?”

“I told you: rest,” she said. “You’re no use to anyone dead on your feet.”

He chuckled with what little wakefulness remained to him.

“Not that you— you don’t need to be useful,” Morgana said hastily, catching herself. The words ran together before she could think to shut herself up, to shove away the unguarded manner and sleep before she could make a proper fool of herself. “Not here. Only you. Should only be you in here.”

His silence made her squeeze her eyes shut and grimace until she heard Raubahn’s breathing and realized he’d simply fallen asleep. Huffing out a breath, she turned stiffly onto her side, curling her knees up towards her chest, and did not sleep.

She watched the light shift across her floor and listened to Raubahn’s breathing and tapped her fingers on the side of her thigh until she’d had enough.

In the time that weaved dawn into sunrise and sunrise into morning, Morgana sat in front of her dirty, cracked mirror and braided back the strands of grey in her hair, gathering it up in a high bun; she dressed in her last clean pair of trousers and a threadbare gown she’d worn on the coldest nights in Thanalan and stepped out into the streets, walking barefooted on the cool cobblestones as though it would pull her even closer to the earth. 

She let her feet take her towards the edge of the promenade overlooking the Queen’s Gardens and watched the sun kiss the trees to turn the edges of their green leaves to deep gold. As she had in Castrum Oriens—as she always did, now, when she considered the beauty of the natural world—she thought of Sairsel, of the things he cherished. She’d come to cherish them, too, and it felt strange to realize it; she had allowed herself little fondness since finding herself alone in Little Ala Mhigo without her family.

But she hadn’t forgotten how to cherish, and that in itself was a blessing, as much as it was to discover the feeling again. A part of her revolted at the idea of leaving herself so vulnerable, of opening the door to loss once again. The other was simply weary. 

It hadn’t stopped hurting, and it hadn’t kept anything at bay. She had hurt enough by now; she couldn’t tolerate the thought that it could have been all for nothing. She couldn’t have been for nothing.

The hunting cry of a griffin pierced the sky; its wings cut a dark shadow into the soft morning blue. Morgana watched as it flew overhead, wild and free: it dove into the trees, sharp talons outstretched, and soon soared back up with its prey. Restlessly, she tapped her fingers against the stone as though punctuating the sword strokes of beatings her body remembered taking, and then she dropped her hand and turned back the way she came.

She realized, as she pivoted—the weight was all wrong—that she had walked out of her home without a sword, without a single blade on her. It was so simple, facing the fact that she didn’t need it; not here, and not in this moment. This land that belonged to her childhood, these walls that they had broken down to build back as their own once again—they did not need her with nothing else but the fight running through her veins.

Morgana returned to her home, small and tucked back from a cobbled street high in the city, feeling wide awake in a way that was unfamiliar. Awake like she had all the time in the world to simply _be._ She went inside, back into the silence, and stood before the doorway simply looking at the quiet force of the two swords resting together beside it, propped against the wall. She tilted her head; remembered all the times she’d laid her sword by the door of Gotwin’s home and moved under his roof unburdened to kiss Havisa’s cheek and sit with her for tea. She’d done the same at Saskia’s, too, almost reverently.

It almost made her smile.

Like following a breeze, she drifted towards the hearth and made tea, pouring the water into the leaves in her cup—Havisa’s way. She rose her cup to her ghosts and drank, and then she drifted back outside.

She was smoking a pipe in the open doorway, basking in the touch of sunlight on the salty air, when Raubahn came to stand behind her. His presence filled the space before he even spoke or touched her: quiet and strong in such a way that the world seemed to shift around him that he might only be a part of it. His touch left a gentle spark crackling across Morgana’s skin as he ran his hand down her arm and bowed his head to kiss her neck.

It might have startled her, had she not been so blissfully, so extraordinarily at peace. Now, she was blessed with calm enough to simply enjoy it, closing her eyes to his attention and tilting her head back. Few were the moments like these that could last, and she knew that it wouldn’t—but, for once, she allowed herself to capture the fleeting.

“What are you doing awake?” she asked.

“I’ve a meeting with Lyse soon.”

Morgana clicked her tongue. “You can’t have slept more than three hours.”

“Is this concern I detect in your voice?” Raubahn asked with a teasing edge to his voice.

“It may well be,” she said, her tone strangely airy as she shrugged. She tapped the tip of her pipe against her bottom lip, watching the sky stretching beyond, then twisted to lean sideways into the doorway that she might look at him. “Would it really be so surprising to you, knowing that I give a damn?”

“Not at all,” Raubahn said honestly. “I knew. But I do know as well that speaking the words can be a different affair entirely.”

“Perhaps.”

Morgana put the pipe between her teeth again, puffing out a few breaths. She opened her mouth to say something too earnest and altogether embarrassing, but Raubahn saved her the trouble by speaking.

“Fair skies,” he commented lightly. “Fine morning.”

“Aye. Lovely.”

Unsure of how long he might stay, Morgana let a growing sense of tense anticipation wash over her: honesty tried to push past her ribs, almost desperate, as though every part of her that was ready to admit to it knew that this moment, as though suspended in time, was her only chance.

“Of course I’m concerned, Raubahn,” she said all at once, pushing the words out with a sigh. “Our bodies aren’t what they used to be, and you were fighting a primal just a few hours past.”

Idly, Raubahn traced a finger down the length of Morgana's neck, brushing back the stray hairs that had fallen from her bun. Morgana found herself struggling to read the way he looked at her once again. “I know,” he said. “I will do my best not to repeat the experience.”

Morgana nodded. Then she looked up at him. “Why wouldn’t you have stayed?” she asked at last. The question had gnawed at her since the day she’d realized he planned on returning to Ul’dah, buried under layers of frustration and bitterness to keep herself from going mad with the wondering. She had no part of herself left to give to this doubt. Last chance; no more of it after this moment. “Before. You risked everything to fight the damned primal, but you still almost left.”

“I swore an oath,” Raubahn said, frowning. “I have served and bled for Ul’dah and Nanamo—and raised an Ul’dahn son. They are my family.”

After every meaningless horror to befall her family on this side of the Wall, Morgana couldn’t conceive leaving this land that had been, for a time, all she had left to live for. But Raubahn had built, and he had never stopped fighting—and the thought left her dripping with the strangest sort of envy.

She realized she’d looked away when his hand tipped her chin back towards him. “I was torn. I have been since the moment we raised the griffin back upon our walls. My family may be in Ul’dah, but my heart is here. It always has been, and will always remain.”

Morgana lost herself, even for one heartbeat, in the depths of his eyes; of his voice. Then she nodded, slowly.

“So is mine,” she said, and then she had nothing else to say.

Raubahn waited, hesitant in his expectation for something that he seemed to know wouldn’t come. Resolute, he leaned back inside the doorway to recover his sword—Morgana almost ached for the anchor of her own, and clung to the pipe instead—before stepping past her, his feet quiet on the dusty stone of the street.

He looked her way and gave her some small, unassuming smile. “I’ll not go far,” he said before turning away.


	5. Chapter 5

“I’m not sure about this, Morgana,” said Sairsel.  


“I can’t tell which is stranger,” Morgana said, content to ignore his concerns as she bent down to pick up a training sword. Her left arm still felt on fire if she so much as held a kitchen knife, but she had no intention of letting it make any sort of difference in her life. She’d had enough of staying still for the sake of allowing something to heal that would never return to what it had been before. “You calling me ‘mother,’ or addressing me by my name.”

Sairsel frowned and let his tone fall flat, the way Morgana liked. She was growing rather fond of what character he allowed himself to show her; a little more every day. “If you can tolerate neither, I’m afraid our only recourse is to not speak to each other at all.”

“Wouldn’t that please you,” Morgana snorted.

“I don’t like talking.”

“Or fighting, by the looks of it.” With the end of her training sword, Morgana nudged Sairsel’s crossed arms, trying to dislodge his stiff posture. “Come, now, boy. If you’re going to be roaming the highlands on your own, you had better know how to keep yourself alive.”

Sairsel scrunched up his nose and swatted at the sword. “I can fight just fine.”

“So show me, then. Put some peace in your poor mother’s heart.”

“You don’t want to fight me because you’re concerned,” Sairsel said. He had keener eyes than he let on, and their sight was beginning to break through the naïve veil of his youth. “You just want to fight _someone._ And you know the reason I won’t fight you has nothing to do with my own skill.”

“You think I’m afraid of some green boy who’s been fighting for, what, a year? I was on the bloodsands while you were still in swaddling clothes.”

At first, her goading only served to make Sairsel roll his eyes again. “And now you’re old and injured,” he said with all the sharp edges he’d learned from her, turning away to swipe up a staff from the ground. “If the healers ask, tell them you’ve brought this on yourself.”

Morgana found herself grinning; when he turned back towards her and saw her expression, Sairsel paused, almost drawing back. His surprise gave him the look of a deer about to bound away, but he stayed firm, and gave the staff a tentative twirl as though it were a spear. Seeing how easily he fell into his battle stance, Morgana matched his focus. The smile fell away as quickly as it had come.

“I haven’t seen you with a spear in your hands since the Reach,” she said.

“I’m not talking about this.”

Sairsel’s grip shifted on the staff, his fingers tightening; halfway between moving to strike and staying still as a statue, his limbs bound by doubt. Of course he wouldn’t try for the first move; Morgana didn’t know what he was afraid of, but his hesitation was familiar. If his initial discomfort with violence had been his foremost enemy in learning sword-skill back in Little Ala Mhigo, what now remained was his nature—as simple as holding back.

Waiting for him to finally strike first would have delighted Morgana, had she the patience for it—but she was too restless, too hot-headed even when tempered, and Sairsel needed the impetus.

So she opened with a feint. Her foot stomped down heavy on the ground, the shock of it running up her ankle and wrapping around her shin—almost delightfully so. Reactive, Sairsel stepped back and raised his staff with both hands to block a blow that didn’t come. It almost made Morgana click her tongue. She pushed forward; he stepped back.

Someone whistled from behind her; a few Resistance fighters had gathered to watch. “Come on, Sairsel!” shouted Leofric Snakesbane.

Morgana laid the point of her sword against Sairsel’s chest before it could distract him. She heard Brida’s voice, too, cheering her on—the voice that had bellowed rallying cries through the royal palace when Morgana fought with the Ala Mhigan Brigade. Her neck pricked at the sound of some of Brida’s words: the Griffin’s Talons.

“You are in your head, boy,” Morgana said sharply before the words could become true for her, feinting again: striking wide, stopping her own momentum. Sweeping up an underhanded blow.

Sairsel saw her eyes. He bent forward, stepping away, and jabbed his staff into her ribs. A hiss slipped past Morgana’s lips. Sairsel said nothing of the blow, his focus as sharp as his gaze. _Good._ Pain hitched where he’d struck, but it was welcome: pain in her right side, the pain of the slightest bruise.

Better pain than what burned through her left arm like a memory. She wanted it, wanted the breathlessness of a fight. And Sairsel made a fine opponent—even if he fought like someone else. Morgana dodged an upward thrust, saw him unbalanced: his lunge was too wide, as though it belonged to legs longer than his. Even the way he held his staff was not him; not his shoulders, not his arms.

He fought like he couldn’t dare to make anything that wasn’t the bow into his own. His feet scraped against the ground with a weight that didn’t belong to an archer, but he spun away from her next blow like a gust of wind, and for a moment she thought she saw herself at his age. 

And Sairsel was smart. One second’s hesitation, and he cracked his staff across Morgana’s knuckles. Her grip faltered; the sword fell. Instinct brought her left hand down to catch it.

A practice sword, and she couldn’t even lift it. Sairsel saw this, too: he faltered, both hands tight around the staff, and Morgana shoved him away. When he stumbled back and down to the ground with a huff, she didn’t press her advantage; she stopped her own momentum dead in its tracks.

“Sairsel,” she said, just as Raubahn stepped forward.

She hadn’t even noticed him.

“Mind if I cut in, lad?” he asked, offering Sairsel his hand.

For a moment, the boy had that startled animal look about him again; his gaze flicked to Morgana, who simply gave a shrug, and he finally gripped Raubahn’s wrist and swung back onto his feet.

“I’d be glad to end the thrashing there,” Sairsel said with a nervous smile, looking back to Morgana again as he rubbed a hand to his lower back.

“Come here,” Morgana said, beckoning him. She laid the point of her sword against the ground, resting her left hand on the pommel as though it were a cane, and ignored her throbbing skin as Sairsel walked over to her. When he was close enough to reach—always keeping his distance—she raised her hand to rest against the back of his neck. “You did better than you think. Just don’t hesitate so much. Who taught you spear-skill?”

Sairsel scratched the stubble at his jaw. “A pirate.”

“Your Elezen friend?” she asked, and Sairsel nodded stiffly. “She’s taller than you, isn’t she? Longer limbs.”

“I—what?”

“You fight with her body, not yours.” Morgana clapped Sairsel’s back, and rose her voice that it might carry further than her son’s keen ears. “Think about it some. I have a war hero to humble.”

Raubahn chuckled. “Full glad am I to see you’re as cocksure as you used to be.”

“Cocksure, or simply self-aware?” Morgana said. It was too easy to match the smile dancing on Raubahn’s lips, to forget her fear of the ache in her left arm as she took up the practice sword again. She rolled her wrist, twirling the sword once in her hand, and slowly circled him.

“That remains to be seen.”

Morgana smirked. “Wonder what’s changed since the last time we did this.”

“I’ve lost near a stone of my own flesh.”

“And I spent the better part of twenty years starving while that arse got fat sitting on the Syndicate,” Morgana said, thumping the flat of her sword against Raubahn’s backside, “so don’t make me cry.”

“So I might just hold my own against you, then?” he said, narrowing his eyes with a shadow of a smile. He faced her, widened his stance, and hoisted his practice sword onto his shoulder as though it were far heavier than it truly was—inviting her to make the first move.

She smirked. “Might.”

Much had changed in the last twenty years: Raubahn had spent far longer on the bloodsands, for one, and commanded forces at Carteneau and beyond; they had both suffered injuries, small and grave, that irreparably changed their bodies; they were older, and they had learned to survive in ways that their youth could never have foreseen. But, most of all, they knew each other—beyond everything they might have learned even by the very end of the time they had shared at the Coliseum.

In the breathless, thrumming anticipation of the last moments before battle, Morgana wondered if she would even need to read him.

She inhaled, drew her ribs in, and charged. And she did not need to read him: she realized that it was rather more like hearing a melody, following each familiar rise and fall; knowing the notes before they even came. She knew Raubahn did not intend to dodge even before her sword connected.

The shock of his block reverberated through her whole arm, dug the hilt of the practice sword deeper into his hand. He threw the brunt of his strength at her to push her back: Morgana’s boots rasped against the ground, almost like stumbling. But she was firm even on the back foot. Rooted down. Anchored in Raubahn’s eyes, in the sound of his breath, in the way his body moved.

Her muscles burned like the breath in her lungs, and she welcomed the flames. Every time her skin touched Raubahn’s in a parry, she felt that familiar spark, the heat—and it only made her battle-fierceness grow. 

They traded blows, quick and relentless; quicker than anyone watching might have expected, she knew. The breath of the small crowd gathered around them floated around her like a fading dream of the bloodsands, a chorus of quiet gasps and hisses brought on by the brutality that was to them a second nature. Still, she could hardly hear them—not over the sound of her own panting, of Raubahn’s sharp breaths, of their grunts and groans. 

A bruise blossomed at the center of Morgana’s chest where her breastbone had caught the pommel of Raubahn’s sword, backhanded but sharp enough to last; she stepped hard enough on his foot that his bones would remember on the morrow. His kicks were stiffer, now, and the way he bore his weight different, but not unfamiliar. Morgana had held him enough since breaching the Wall to know it by heart.

And she no longer ducked and dodged with the same speed. Raubahn saw it: he caught her on clever backstrokes when she was recovering, sent her stumbling back more than once. A reach like his and only one arm, and he still kept close, kept his blows sharp rather than sweeping wide. Not the best way to stay alive in a real fight, but he knew how to guard his left far better than Morgana did her own, and this wasn’t about staying alive.

It was finally a dance: a brutal, graceless dance, but one that knew to join their hearts and guide their feet better than anything else could.

On instinct, Morgana deflected a backhand with her left palm: her hand shot down, pulling at the taut scars, sending pain clawing down the length of her arm. She cried out through gritted teeth, and Raubahn faltered—but she shook her head, charged once more, crouched low in her momentum to trip him and send him crashing down on his back. He rolled away, leveraged his sword against the ground, pushed himself up. Blocked her cleave while still down on one knee.

“Old tricks,” Raubahn said with a smirk, and smashed the flat of his sword into her right side. 

For a mere few heartbeats, the flow of battle broke while Morgana found her breath again among the pain flashing up her side and Raubahn bounded to his feet.

“Can’t fault me for trying.”

Raubahn saw the stiffness begin to settle over her shoulders and down her arms, an emptiness bleeding through her muscles; likely he felt the same. “Tired?” he asked.

It was all he could do to dodge the wide sweep of her sword, pushed back by her desperate advance. One foot in front of the other, heavy on the ground.

“Aye,” Morgana said. But she did not stop.

She brought her sword down to bear, and he raised his, the dull blades caught in a crossing that became a contest of will as much as it was strength. With her fingers tight around the hilt of her sword, Morgana pushed until it ached, until she shook—the sensation sweet and terrible and like life itself being poured into her lungs as she breathed sharp and burning. She threw all her weight into her front, leaned in close.

When she looked into Raubahn’s eyes, it was as though she were looking at herself. She saw him; she saw the way forward. 

It was the strangest thing, how badly she wanted to kiss him. If not for the pointed awareness of their humble audience, she might have—but she was as competitive as she valued her privacy.

All at once, she let go: let his strike fall free, pushing back against nothing. By the time the sword might have struck her, she had already danced away. She threw up a backhanded parry, struck a new bruise onto his arm. Raubahn grunted, but didn’t drop his sword; his riposte lacked in strength, but not in speed.

Morgana sidestepped to his left. She felt his vulnerability like the crack of a whip, watched him snap into the familiar gamble—and her feet were too heavy to escape his charge, this time. His shoulder struck her chest, sent her tumbling down.

Instinct before sense. As soon as she touched the ground, it was her left arm that tried to recover, and pain tore through skin and muscle both. Sharp, like the strangled cry that left her throat. She rolled to the other side, all her weight leveraged on her good arm, and brandished her middle and forefinger with a shaking hand as though they were a weapon.

“ _Missio,_ ” she rasped. Raubahn was already dropping down to one knee by the time she had finished uttering the word.

And Sairsel was on the other side of her quickly enough, too. “Are you all right?” he said, more alarmed than he ought to be.

“I’m—fine. Bloody _hells,_ that hurts,” Morgana said, trying to steady her breathing as she curled her left arm against her torso. Her fingers went to the scars, sweeping quickly over the expanse of skin she could still hardly bring herself to touch on a normal day. Thankfully, they didn’t come away bloody. “I’m all right, boy. Go on.”

Sairsel threw Raubahn a glance before looking back to her.

“Are you sure?”

“Sairsel,” Morgana said, her voice low. Sairsel raised both palms, surrendering.

“Fine. I’ll get you some herbs for the pain.”

“I’ve got her, lad,” said Raubahn reassuringly. He watched as Sairsel gave Morgana some unreadable expression and left, then added a pointed look of his own.

“He was going to fuss,” Morgana said flatly. “Son shouldn’t be fussing over his mother. Should be the other way around.”

Wordlessly, she nudged Raubahn's arm; he understood, rose to his feet, and offered his hand. Morgana gripped his forearm and hoisted herself back up, still gritting her teeth as chattering Resistance fighters wandered away.

“That was some hells of a fight, Morgana,” said Brida in passing, before nodding at Raubahn, “Commander. Felt like the bloodsands again. Shame about that arm.”

Morgana waited until she was out of earshot to speak. “Do you think she meant my arm, or yours?”

Raubahn snorted. He steered her towards some weapon stores adjacent to the training grounds, closing the door behind them. Morgana leaned against a table with a sigh, and allowed herself to cradle her left arm in her right. Pain still coursed through her, morphing with the passing seconds: now it was pins and needles, halfway between pain and an itch that burrowed under her skin, and a chorus of aching muscles and weary bones.

That, at least, she could appreciate. But not her arm.

“Bloody useless,” she stormed under her breath.

Raubahn slipped his hand under her elbow to inspect the scars, and Morgana opted to let him. His touch was warm, soothing. 

“The pain?”

“Bearable,” Morgana sighed, her jaw tight with the admission that came: “My pride hurts worse.”

“No shame in surrender,” Raubahn said—Raubahn, who had given her the first surrender, so long ago it seemed like half a dream. For a moment, his eyes were distant as he raised his hand and ran fingers under his pauldron, scratching idly at what remained of his left arm. “One of my first commanders in the army—she drilled us like she loathed us, but she had wisdom. ‘Every hurt is a lesson,’ she said. I had to accept a great many lessons from the day Ilberd took my arm.”

Morgana sighed slowly through her nose. “And?”

“From experience, I would advise against shame. You will adapt.”

She knew he had the right of it; he was as infuriating in that way as Saskia had been. But Morgana had never been one for easy wisdom. Her very nature seemed to know only how to push back.

“I didn’t think it would be so bad,” she confessed, keeping her voice low and her gaze distant. “It’s only burns, isn’t it? I still have an arm. I can still use it. It’s stopped hurting every time I moved, so I thought I might still be able to fight.”

“You can still fight.”

Morgana glanced up at Raubahn. He regarded her with unyielding conviction—the sort that did not allow even the slightest contradiction. It was the kindest thing he could do for her, to set aside even the mere possibility of pity. She sighed again.

“Of all the people to complain to; I know.”

Raubahn almost smiled. “Who better?” he said, then laid his hand against her shoulder. “You lost a spar, Morgana, and barely. I have no concerns for your future.”

Unthinking, Morgana raised her hand to lay over his, slipping her thumb under his palm. Her own fondness shocked her.

“It was a good fight,” she said, dropping her hand. Raubahn removed his own.

“Aye.”

It was a fight she couldn’t have had with anyone else, but Morgana could only hope that he grasped that meaning without the words to express it. Because they were equals, because they were the same; because he knew her and she knew him.

Morgana’s heart hammered in her chest hard enough to make her believe she was still fighting. “I’m tired, Raubahn,” she said, surrendering.

“After all the years of fighting—”

“No. It’s not that. I’m tired of fucking and pretending that’s all there is.”

Raubahn’s silence, weighed down by his steely gaze, was nigh unbearable. He glanced down at the old scars on her throat, keeping his distance. “I never pretended.”

“You mean that’s all there is? Just two old comrades having some convenient arrangement?” Morgana asked, frowning. She could almost taste her own poison again.

“No, Morgana,” he said slowly. “I mean I never could pretend. Not twenty years ago, and not now.”

The floor might have spun away under her feet, then, and Morgana might not even have noticed. Her own ribs seemed to want to pierce her heart, and she could hardly make sense of his meaning as it was.

She understood the words. She understood, but she couldn't.

“Have I made a complete arse of myself?” she asked, her voice rasping in its near-silence.

“Utterly,” Raubahn said. A smile pulled at his lips. “But it comes with the territory, I suppose. You always have been a bit of a bastard.”

Morgana realized that she was laughing. Aching and weary from the fight and half a lifetime, but laughing. She curled the fingers of her right hand in the fabric of Raubahn’s cloak and brought him close, looking up into his eyes before pressing her lips against his. Her hand slid up to anchor at the side of his neck; she could feel his heartbeat underneath her fingertips. And she felt it like a tether.

When he pulled back and touched his brow to hers, she closed her eyes and simply breathed; simply lived, taking the quiet seconds as hers. His voice filled the spaces in the silence, threaded into that peace.

“Would you let me be yours? Call you mine?”

“You have me,” Morgana said—words she thought would never again leave her lips. “For as long as you’ll want me.”

Raubahn sighed; his shoulders dropped, falling with his breath. And Morgana unraveled, too, so that she could weave herself back together with him. Gently, he pressed a kiss to her forehead.

For that moment, the aches no longer mattered. The bruise forming on her chest, the burning memory burrowing through her left arm—all she heard them scream as she moved was that she was alive, and for once, living did not feel like a burden. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders, held him close, buried her face in his neck as he wound his arm around her. Steady and sure.

Her surrender had taken much too long to come, but she felt lighter without the weight of carrying it than she had in years.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you've made it this far, thank you so much for reading! ❤ drop me a line if you'd like, and you can also find me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/vulpinewood) for shitposting and memes.


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